Seinfeld to be first performer at new Sugar Land venue

Updated 2:36 pm, Monday, July 11, 2016

Jerry Seinfeld ditches the comedians and talks about his favorite cars from the Crackle series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Media: Road & Track

Jerry Seinfeld will be the inaugural performer at the new Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land, which opens with the stand-up comedian's performance on Jan. 14, 2017.

Tickets will go on sale later this week. Additional performances at the new venue - including music and theater productions - will be announced in the coming weeks.

The Smart Financial Centre will be located at 18111 Lexington, and due to an 8,000-pound movable wall it can be configured for four different seating arrangements ranging from 3,100 to 6,400 seats. The $100 million venue has been in development for seven years as part of a larger development plan in Sugar Land that includes a minor league baseball park, a cultural arts center, a conference center, hotel and a festival site.

The project has been steered by ACE Sugar Land, a company run by Allen Becker, whose storied career in event promotion, production and venue management started in 1966 with PACE Entertainment, which booked events at the Astrodome when the venue had no non-professional sporting events. The Houston Boat Show was the first, and PACE expanded into motor sports events and concerts. Today Becker runs ACE with his son Gary Becker, a Houston native who grew up in the industry.

Gary Becker says ACE has 100 percent control over bookings at the new Smart Financial Centre, and suggests events will reflect Houston's diversity and include rock, touring Broadway productions, Spanish-language shows, hip-hop and comedy. Church services and commencement ceremonies also will be held there.

But concerts will be a primary draw, as the Smart Financial Centre looks to fill a need between club-level shows and the larger ones hosted at the Toyota Center downtown and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands. The Pavilion is about 31 miles north of downtown, whereas the new venue is 23 miles to the southwest.

Gary Becker thinks audiences ages 40-60 may find the air-conditioned Smart Financial Center a more comfortable environment during the summer, but he says there should be room for all the venues in the region.